"Ogres, maybe," the kender told himself cheerfully. "A beckoning vesper to lead the unwary into a nest of ogres. Or hobgoblins, perhaps? No, probably not. They aren't smart enough to think of something like that."
He paused for a moment, searched in his pouch, and withdrew a sling – a small, soft-leather pocket with elastic loops attached to either end. He secured the loops to the ends of the fork on his hoopak, kicked around in the fallen leaves until he found a few good pebbles, then hurried on, following where the vesper had been. He went on, not seeing the strange air-shift again, but keeping to its original direction.
After a time the forest broke away, and Chess found himself on a low, broken ridge with a clearing extending from its base. A great shallow bowl of ground, broken here and there by groves of trees and grassy knolls, the clearing extended into distances where herds of animals grazed. Beyond them, forests rose toward the tumbles and steeps of the valley's east wall.
Nearer, though, in the bottom of the bowl, was a wide field of what looked like ice – flat around the edges, but distorted within by many random shapes and lumps that seemed to grow from it.
The kender scrambled down the ledge and approached the field of ice. All around it, the air was cold and silent.
"Old," the silence seemed to say.
"Right," the kender agreed. He knelt at the edge of the field and rapped at it with his staff. The stuff looked and sounded like ice, and when a sliver of it broke away he tasted it. It was ice. "It's ice," he said.
"Fire and ice," the silence seemed to say. "Old."
Encouraged, Chess wandered out onto the ice. A few steps brought him to the nearest of the weird shapes – a tangled mound of crystals and spires higher than his head and twenty feet long. He knelt, looking into it, seeing twisted dark shadows inside. He rapped at it with the heel of his staff. Little cracks formed, then a hole, larger than his head, appeared in it as bits of ice fell away. Inside was a blackened tangle of burned branches, and a mist like ancient woodsmoke rose from the hole. He stuck his head through for a better look. Inside the ice was a burned tree.
"Fire and ice," he said to himself. It looked as though the tree had burned and toppled, then been caked with ice while it still burned.
All around were other interesting ice mounds. The kender wandered among them, peering here and there, his eyes wide with the pure delight of a kender amidst a mystery. Sometimes he could not see what the ice held, but sometimes he could. One small lump contained a dead dwarf – a short, thick-set body armored with mail and visored helm. A bolt from a crossbow had pierced him. He lay across an emblazoned shield, preserved by the ice so that the blood of his wound was still bright red. Hill dwarf, the kender thought. He looks as though he might have died just minutes ago.
"Old," something seemed to say.
Chess stood and turned away, but stopped as something in the flat ice underfoot caught his attention. He knelt again, brushing at the surface.
Just beneath it, things glittered and shone. He went to work with his staff.
Breaking away the shallow ice, he found a broadsword, its edge notched by combat but still as shiny as when it was new. He lifted it, then set it aside. A good dwarven weapon, it was too heavy and awkward to suit a kender. But there were other interesting things there, as well. One by one, he lifted out a pewter mug, a string of marble beads, and a little glass ball. He looked them over, then moved on. Under other ice mounds were other dead dwarves, some standing, some kneeling and some fallen.
Dwarves with hammers and swords, frozen in mortal combat. Hill dwarves and mountain dwarves, locked now in solid ice in a battle that would never end.
"What ever could they have been fighting about?" the kender wondered.
"The gates," something seemed to say.
Chess peered all around, shading his eyes. He saw nothing anywhere that looked like gates. "Gates? What gates?"
"The gates of Thorbardin," the silence seemed to say.
"That dwarf should have come with me," the kender muttered. "I'll bet he never saw anything like this."
At the thought of Chane Feldstone, Chess looked back the way he had come. The dwarf had said something about wanting a sword. Chess snooped for a while longer, then decided there was nothing to see here that was more unusual than what he had already seen. He went back to where he had left the dwarven sword, hoisted it on his shoulder, and started back, more or less retracing his steps. Chess had in mind to leave the sword somewhere that the dwarf would be likely to pass – if he came north at all
– so he decided he would retrace his steps to the black road.
"So long," something seemed to say.
Chess turned, looking all around, yet no longer expecting to see someone. "Oh, yes," he said. "So long to you, too."
The silence seemed puzzled and suddenly very sad. "So very long," it seemed to say.
Chess didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing and went on his way. The sun sank below the valley's west wall, and the forest became a shadowy place. Here and there, little mists formed above the leaf mold to drift vague tendrils among the trees. Chess wandered, pausing to look at a bright stone, a bird's nest, a scattering of bones where some predator had fed. Whatever caught his eye, he inspected. Whatever came to hand, he picked up. Whatever appealed to him – if there was space for it – went into his pouch. It was the way of all the kender, and Chestal
Thicketsway was no exception.
In evening shadows, somewhere near where he expected to find the black road, he came across another gnomish artifact – an ancient, fallen construct that might once have been a catapult, except that no one could conceivably have operated a catapult so huge and complex. He walked around and through the overgrown wreckage, trying to imagine how the thing might once have looked – a huge, impossibly complex machine standing at least a hundred feet tall on four gigantic wheels with spiked iron rims… endlessly intricate systems of pulleys and gears, levers and winding mechanisms, steam boilers and windvanes… and probably half a hundred whistles, bells, and ratchet-rattles.
Little was left of it now. What had been wood was entirely gone. What had been stone was rubble. What had been iron was designs of rust imbedded in the ground. But he traced it out, and could surmise what had happened.
Here an army of gnomes had built a siege engine and had set it off.
Possibly it had thrown a missile, but definitely it had thrown itself. The entire machine had climbed up onto its throwing arm, flipped over and landed on its back. And there it lay to this day, what was left of it.
Such a long, long time ago. So inconceivably old.
"Ages," something seemed to say.
Chess jumped, then turned full circle again, squinting into the twilight. "I thought I had left you back there," he snapped.
"All the ages since the first," the breeze whispered. "Old. Very old."
"Well, I can see that," the kender agreed. "Are you following me?"
"With you," something whispered.
"Why?"
"By your doing," the voice that was no voice said.
"By my -" Chess strode to where he had set the dwarven sword and picked it up. "Aha!" he said. Then he raised a puzzled brow and rubbed at his cheek. "Funny, though. I'd heard that magic doesn't work right in this valley."
"I don't," something very wistful seemed to say.
It was growing dark, and there was nothing more to see here, so Chess set the sword on his shoulder and headed west. The black road should be near now, he decided.
The forest became deeper and more shadowy, and the kender stopped abruptly, his pointed ears twitching. Somewhere to his left, things were moving, coming his way. Among the shadows were darker shadows, big shadows flowing and bounding toward him on great padded paws… shadows that purred as they came, like the rumbling of distant thunder.